Seeing Red. A Study in Consciousness

Consciousness matters, perhaps more than anything. But why this is, what this means--the question itself a function of consciousness--has always seemed beyond our powers to explain. Beginning with the seemingly simple act of seeing red, the fact of a conscious sensation, this brilliantly unsettling essay by one of our most interesting writers on human intelligence builds toward an explanation of why consciousness matters--why, in short, it makes compelling evolutionary sense. Interleaved with intriguing specifics (about monkeys´ favorite color, for instance, or Isaac Newton´s crimson decorating scheme, or devices that map visual stimuli into "soundscapes"), Nicholas Humphrey´s book develops a new theory of how sensations are created, and how and why they have evolved. Then, in a bold reconstruction of the evolutionary trajectory, Humphrey suggests that consciousness developed from the "privatizing" of sensation and experience, and has lasted and deepened because, in the end, mattering is its function: such consciousness creates a self whose life is worth pursuing and preserving. From sensations that probably began in bodily expression--our primordial ancestors´ wriggles toward or away from stimuli--to the evolutionary advantages of a conscious self, Seeing Red tracks the "hard problem" of consciousness to its source and its solution, a solution in which, paradoxically, the very hardness of the problem may make all the difference.